Media has become a mirror of the
disconnected state that humanity finds itself in. News,
current affairs, even the dramas and reality TV shows that
entertain us serve to exacerbate the religion of polarity
being reflected back to us in all its forms – materialism,
hatred, killing, idolization and separation. Almost all
television, be it sagas and melodramas or daily news, is
as addictive as any drug. This single dimensional ‘pulpit’
from which media preaches to us (often in the centre of
our living rooms) actually seeds many of our negative
behavior patterns in day-to-day life.
Dramas and melodramas aside, we have
been led to believe that the news and current affairs
programs we watch are true, unbiased, fair. Often this is
anything but the case. News is provided, increasingly, by
a select few. Those who have views outside what the owners
of global media want us to hear and see have found
themselves without a platform from which to present their
knowledge and opinions.
Governments ensure that only the very
powerful are able to access our living rooms by staking
ownership and guardianship of the airwaves through
licensing priced well outside the reach of ordinary
people. As a result the news we see in all developed
countries, particularly those of Anglo-Saxon ethnicity, is
exactly the same, word for word, picture for picture.
There is purpose behind this; it ensures that the now
global corporate empires of media become bigger and more
powerful, gobbling up any small players along the way. A
select few controlling interests effectively distort
democracy by shaping public opinion through deception on a
grand scale.
The news we watch steers our attention
in the direction needed to affect the outcome desired by
this greedy, inhumane elite. It perpetuates polarity and
provides the momentum necessary for its growth. Our
feelings of vengeance and self-righteousness, seeded by
lack of balance and distortion of truth reported to us in
our news, is the fuel needed for us to supply ‘boy-power’
for the wars we are about to wage (or are already waging).
In the few years since television made its debut into
society, people who would be dictators have found the
perfect uninterrupted medium through which to shape
opinion every night of the week – they do it from behind
the scenes by filtering the news and programming we watch.
It is interesting that the first ever public television
broadcast was of Adolph Hitler opening the Olympic games
in Munich – he understood the immense potential of this
new communication medium. Media can be the most powerful
tool of freedom for a people but it can also be the most
powerful instrument of propaganda.
It is considered good reporting to
present a news story that shows as much violence as can be
tolerated by the average family during or shortly after
dinner time. Almost always this violence is aimed at
promoting law and order, or steering our opinion regarding
some conflict abroad. If we were shown the degree of
violence which our nations have unleashed on millions of
people the world over, on our behalf, we would be
horrified and would quickly rise up against those
governing us. But, alas, we are not shown these revealing
images. Propaganda steers our opinion exactly where it is
intended to go. Disturbing, angry, fear-invoking images
are the norm, always biased to keep us on side.
It is our spiritual starvation, our
endless wanting, that has grown media into what it has
become. For many of us the most exciting dreams we have
are to possess whatever product we have seen that we most
want. For some of us the most exciting event of the day is
the color brochure that arrives in our mail, full of
dreams in the form of things we can purchase. Whole
programs are presented where we watch the best ads. Whole
channels exist where all programming is advertising. Media
is actually supplying the information that sells and is in
demand. As ego-selves in denial of the common thread
linking each of us through creator-self, we do not realize
the true implications of this demand. We have not yet come
to understand the impact it has upon our world. Media is
much more than a vehicle for supplying us with information
to make decisions – it gives us the very raw materials
with which we create even more misery.
One of the most basic factors
determining whether or not a story is newsworthy is the
level of interest the story will generate. The more
interesting the story, the more people tune in, the
greater the advertising revenue for the television
station. Because we are raised to believe almost
exclusively in competition, excitement is generated by
seeing the suffering of another individual – by taking a
side and watching our side win. Stories of co-operation
are rare and much less popular than those showing
competition. When co-operation is shown it is usually in
the form of one team against another, one army against
another, etc. This is not co-operation in the true sense.
True co-operation would mean one team, one humanity, one
earth – why would any aspect of the whole wish to attack
one of its parts?
Even our nature shows teach us that
co-operation in the natural world is all but non-existent
and that animals are just like we should be – in a
perpetual state of war, heterosexual, and in many cases
mating (‘married’) for life. We have imposed our
subjective evaluation on them, turning a blind eye to the
reality of the animal kingdom. When we see a nature
program showing animals in the wild, we are led to believe
that life is war – a perpetual state of hunting and being
hunted. Those who have actually experienced the real
natural world, now a minority of humans, know this is
clearly a deception. Film crews spend months, sometimes
years waiting patiently for these exciting scenes. While
on the lookout for their safety, animals generally enjoy
freedom and peace the likes of which we have forgotten to
even dream about. Predators only hunt what they need,
usually taking out the weak or the excess. Furthermore,
sexuality and its expression in the animal kingdom is
anything but what we have been led to believe. It is
colorful, diverse and natural. While well meaning, those
who interpret animal behavior for us are often biased by
their societal belief systems, subjectivity seeded by
religion – all too often Christianity and Judaism.
Most media outlets are commercial
ventures designed primarily for the purposes of creating
wealth. They need to sell program content (product) that
is desirable, their commercial interests paramount at all
times. Of the few media outlets that are not constrained
in this way, most are government funded. These outlets,
contrary to what we would like to believe, also have to
satisfy their funders. This media sector tends to attract
players of a particular political bent whose
self-preservation (job, financial future and retirement
benefits) rely on the illusion that we need more and more
governing; more controls and restrictions placed on us.
We have a politically left-leaning bias
in the publicly owned media and a right-leaning bias in
the privately owned media. Polarity, once again. It is not
the direction of leaning that matters but the leaning
itself. This leaning results in people being pitted
against one another. (Needless to say, the bias of
religiously sponsored media speaks for itself and we need
hardly waste our time re-iterating its methods.)
Media does report on the problems and
challenges of our world, but in a way that is largely
superficial. All too often media actually misinforms us by
providing the illusion that we are being properly
informed. We hear stories about terrorism, earthquakes,
floods and famines. We hear of our frailty against an
ever-increasing array of attacks commissioned by the
invisible world of bacteria and viruses, frailty that can
be counterattacked by mega-corporations behind the medical
industry. With only ego, without spiritual grounding in
and through ourselves, these reports succeed in invoking
even more fear.
It is all about us and them, whether
they are another tribe, another religion, another country,
another animal, another ‘dumb’ piece of rock crumbling
into the ocean, or a disease that we should all fear. All
they have to do is tell us something is bad for us and we
believe them. ‘They’ have become our father-figure who we
trust and look to for guidance. This is a grave error on
our behalf because many of these people are completely
irresponsible and utterly selfish. We have allowed
ourselves to become disempowered, cowering and fearful,
ready to be herded through any gate and into any trap.
Nothing is our enemy if and when we decide to believe in
ourselves. Believing in ourselves awakens us to the
reality that our earth is alive, intelligent. As with our
bodies, earth ‘speaks’ to us, not in words but in feelings
– feelings we should be listening to.
Our current paradigm is primitive,
patriotic, and dangerous. Our respective countries’
national sport is a case in point. It all seems like a
load of fun – beer swilling, flag waving, drunken crowds,
rowdy cheering in grandstands and dingy bars, fights and
riots after the game. A national sport is designed to
promote patriotism; it is an extended and continuous war
game in which many of us are unwitting contributors.
Through competitive spectator sport we have created an
activity that is the domain of a minority of
physically-suited individuals. For the majority of people
who are either unable to achieve such high standards of
performance or simply don’t desire the activity enough to
partake, participation is reduced to that of mere
spectator. We are entertained just like the ancient crowds
watching gladiators in the Roman coliseum; the only thing
that pulls a crowd to its feet faster than a goal is a
fight. The result is that the overall fitness level of our
media-orientated society continues to reach new lows.
It is during commercial breaks that we
are targeted on an even more personal level. The best way
to sell something to an unconscious self is to tap into
one of the many fears associated with that disconnection.
We are promised extended youth, greater beauty, power,
success – all these can be ours for the right price. The
only effort required is a little shopping. The need for
more stuff is never-ending. We experience a short term
high when we bag the latest product on the shelf, but the
unwritten guarantee is that, if we follow the rules of
this game, we will come to the same end as everyone else.
That is, we will eventually become old, diseased, and
finally die. Why, advertisements even allow us to pre-pay
for our own funeral!
If this is not a dark enough picture,
there is another side to it – one that is almost
completely hidden from us. Our ever-increasing need to
consume more is the fuel that feeds the global engine
churning greater material imbalance and misery by the day.
You may already know this, but if you are able to afford
power, television, even this book, you are part of a
privileged minority of humanity at this time. Most
inhabitants of the earth have no such luxury; many cannot
even read (not because they are stupid, but because they
did not have the opportunity of learning to read). The
greater percentage of humans has only one concern and that
is whether they are going to be able to eat today. For
many this dire situation is directly related to our
imperialism, our greed, our soullessness. Each of us in
the richest nations is destined to consume 15 to 150 times
what one of these people consumes in a lifetime! If we in
the west have just two children, it is equivalent to
giving birth to a small to medium sized village in many
parts of the Third World!
Our cheap luxuries more often than not
come from the places where this ‘other half’ lives. To
produce our cheap products, not just Nike and The Gap, but
almost all our products, many people work an entire month
for a wage that is less than what the average Westerner
earns in a day. This is the only way they can put food on
their tables. The profits for our cheap products stay in
the hands of greedy Westerners and oligarchs.
Maybe, instead of merely pointing our
soiled fingers at pariah companies brought to our
attention by sensational programs targeting just a
handful, we should look at what we really need as
individuals. Instead of feeling guilty about what we buy,
maybe we should look after what we own instead of throwing
it out when the look changes. Maybe we should learn to
maintain and fix things with our own hands, or be prepared
to pay others who have taken the time to learn these
valuable skills fairly and proportionately for their time.
We have lost respect for some of the most important people
in society and it is at our peril because young people are
not being encouraged to learn practical, hands-on
vocations. A kitchen full of managers cannot cook a meal.
A community full of government workers, councilors and
inspectors, inventing and enforcing more and more
regulations, cannot make for a functional, creative,
productive or self-sustaining society. Practical skills
will become invaluable in a real-world sustainable
situation.
As individuals we certainly have enough
challenges to deal with ourselves. Most of us feel that we
have little or no control over what happens on the other
side, in the so-called ‘Third World.’ By stepping one by
one off the treadmill we actually provide the only real
opportunity for these people to begin reassessing their
needs. Because we cannot know anyone else’s plight we are
wise indeed to allow them to proceed without hindrance.
Social revolution is beginning to take place in many
significant parts of the developing world, most notably
South America. It is in our best interests to allow and
observe these revolutions, not judge or interfere with
them.
Although we are economically better off
than many in the world today, we are not in any way more
independent than the poverty-stricken masses in developing
nations. Most of us do not even know where our food comes
from or how it is grown. If we were to lose our
infrastructure for more than a few days we would be in far
worse shape than many people in the Third World. Our
infrastructure, contrary to what we might like to believe,
is weak and fragile. It needs constant maintenance and
repair to keep it running. The day will come when we will
once again need to face the reality that co-operation with
the natural world is the only way to put food on our
tables. Cell phones, high tech devices, flashy vehicles
and silk suits are quite inedible.
Time and again we become convinced of
the benefits of buying some product, only to find out
later that the same product invokes disease. ‘Smoke these
cigarettes for vitality,’ ‘Pay for that tanning session so
that you may have a younger, healthier look’ – just a few
short years ago these were our mantras. Now that
statistics have been gathered to tell us that smoking is
bad, that tanning chambers can damage our skin, the loop
of disconnection is complete – we buy into what they say.
Lack of self-esteem, desire to conform;
these are the true reasons we took up our habits in the
first place. The addictions mask our fears. Our
creator-self tries but ego wins. Tobacco, like sun, can be
medicine. It is us that have turned dis-ease into disease.
Knowing our guilt, governments are now free to tax us
whatever they like; smokers are reminded every time they
light up how bad they are. Others, piously confronting
them for their bad habits, accusing smokers of affecting
their health, fly to far away places, use the same
environmentally harmful products (including a plethora of
pharmaceutical drugs that end up in the water system),
drive their cars and generate dangerous microwave fields
with their cell-phones, not to mention wobbling around
with tens, sometimes hundreds of pounds of extra fat. We
dare not point out the oxymoron – they have the weight of
current public phobia on their side. But this is just the
beginning. A new doorway into judging and mistreating
others has been opened and tested. A whole sector of
society has been openly branded as inconsiderate,
unhealthy, stupid – a burden. Who, we should ask, might be
next?
Media at our collective behest is the
tool that is used to spread so many false ideologies into
our culture. We have been lulled into believing exactly
what media wants us to believe. Allowing media into our
homes and heads is a privilege, not for us, but for them.
We, once fully conscious, will filter out the polarity
being channeled to us. Self-empowered, we will observe and
steer ourselves on our individual journey towards full
awakening. Using the most powerful tool we have, our
contemplative minds, we will once again have time to think
for ourselves.
Media and its message can be our ally,
confirming the insights that come from assimilation with
our creator-selves. It need not serve as a torturous guide
into the world of fear and loss, victims and martyrs,
hatred and blame, servitude and slavery. From a newly
empowered position outside the pendulum of polarity, media
can provide stark evidence of the intensifying circle that
has been cast, one from which there is no way out except
recognition of the obvious. It cannot be squashed, fought
to death, protested into oblivion – no action taken from
within the circle will bring it down. Taking sides will
always set into motion some form of opposition, thereby
granting the quandary a life of its own. One last
climactic time, this time involving all humanity, history
seems destined to repeat. Afterwards, the survivors will
have no choice but to address the fundamental question,
using logic to proceed on a sustainable path of evolution
with each other and all other life – with cooperation,
compassion and honesty.